On this week's Reel Web episode we review several news items in the online video world including the changes to YouTube's homepage, reasons why Apple is not providing YouTube app on their new IOS, legal responsibilities for using copy written material and much more.

Home Page Features on YouTube

As previously discussed, YouTube is rolling out a new home page to all its users. One of the first things you’ll notice is that the thumbnail is now much larger than it used to be which is making that thumbnail way more important than it probably ever was before. You also get more room for your description text and for your title. Secondly, you can now click on the down arrow in the upper right corner of a video on your home feed and it gives you a couple of different options there, including the option to hide the activity and only show uploads from the channel you subscribe to. Or it allows you to completely unsubscribe from that channel.

Another addition to the new home page layout is that after you’ve watched a video, it now makes it a little bit more transparent and grays out the thumbnail a little bit allowing you to know that you've watched it. Finally, they’ve addressed the complaint that a lot of us have had about showing everything versus just showing highlights. It used to be and still is that highlights is the default. However, now if you go and switch it to everything, it will show everything and it will stay that way, it won’t just keep defaulting back to highlights.

YouTube to Provide a News Source

Citizen journalism is becoming huge on YouTube. People just out and about see something happen; they record it on their phone; upload it to YouTube and it goes viral. It seems to be a much more trustworthy source of news and information than some of the stuff that we get on broadcast television. YouTube is working to find ways to harness that information by making a new channel that’s specifically designed just for investigative reporting and it’s called the iFiles. Different media outlets and news networks will be collaborating together to provide a single source on this one channel instead of separating everything out all over the web.

YouTube App Excluded from New Apple IOS 6

Surprisingly, it appears that the YouTube app will no longer be included with Apple's new IOS version. All iPhones and iPads, will not come installed with YouTube app installed on them, like they always have been since the very, very beginning. There is a lot of speculation regarding why Apple has made this decision.

AdWeek Provides a Look at Emerging YouTube Tactics

A recent article from AdWeek entitled How to Win at YouTube covers some of the emerging tactics that are have been coming out of YouTube programming and it discusses what’s working and what’s not. A lot of the information is fairly common knowledge for individuals who have been heavily involved with provide content for some time, but it does provide confirmation that while content is great, engaging with your users and your viewers is even more important. There is some great information and case studies in the article that make it worthwhile to read.

Legal Responsibility Over Embedding Copyrighted Videos

Some answers have been cleared up regarding who is legally responsible for copy written clips that are reused without permission. For example, is someone took a copyrighted clip that they did not have legal rights or permission to upload to YouTube, but they did it anyway and you then took that clip they uploaded and you embed it on your website, would you be legally liable and could you go to jail for sharing a copyrighted video? The answer now is officially, no, you cannot go to jail and you would not get fined. It does depend on whoever is hosting the video. They are the ones responsible and in this case, in the scenario I just gave, that would be YouTube. While this may seem like common sense, there has been a some controversy over who would be the responsible party.

QUESTION: Will Apple's exclusion of the YouTube app affect creators?

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View The Full Video Transcript:

On this week’s look at the Reel Web, we’re going to look at the new Home Page design that’s rolling out to all users at YouTube.com. Also, the YouTube app will not be on the new iPhone operating system, we’ll talk about why that might be the case, as well as a whole bunch of other things this week on the Reel Web.

Hey guys, my name is Tim Schmoyer and welcome to another week of the Reel Web, where every week we just highlight for you guys some of the online video news from the week before. And this week let’s get started with the new Home Page that’s rolling out to all users across YouTube.com. One of the first things you’ll notice is that the thumbnail is now much larger than it used to be, giving you much more real estate, and making that thumbnail way more important than it probably ever was before. But you also get more room for your description text and for your title. You have much more than the 30 characters they used to allot to that space for your title and you can see a little bit more information about the video than you previously could on the former Home Page design.

Taking a little cue from Facebook, it looks like you now click on the down arrow in the upper right corner of a video on your home feed and it gives you a couple of different options there, including the option to hide this activity; only show uploads from the channel you subscribe to or to unsubscribe completely from that channel. I think they’re trying to give users the ability to really clean up that home feed, to get rid of stuff you don’t want to watch anymore; to make room for the stuff you do want to watch, so that people who are subscribers are actually active subscribers, by making it seemingly pretty easy to unsubscribe.

Another cool thing about the new Home Page layout is that after you’ve watched the video, it now makes it a little bit more transparent, kind of grays out the thumbnail a little bit, and puts a little title on it saying: Watched. Letting you know you don’t need to watch this again unless you really, really want to. And thankfully, they’ve kind of addressed the complaint that a lot of us have had about showing everything versus just showing highlights. It used to be and still is that highlights is default. However, now if you go and switch it to everything, it will show everything and it will stay that way, it won’t just keep defaulting back to highlights and kind of annoying everyone.

What you tube is trying to do here I think is that some channels upload like 27 videos a day and other channels may only upload like one video a week. And they don’t that one video that was uploaded from that one channel just once a week to be drowned out by the channel that’s uploading like tons of videos every day. So they’re trying to kind of organize it for you a little bit, so you can navigate all the different kind of content you’re subscribed to. Some people are like, “Hey, if I subscribe to that channel and post 27 videos up there a day, I want to see all 27 videos. Don’t hide any of them from me.” And if that’s you, click the “Everything Box” and everything will be fine from then on. But other people are like, “Yeah, I like this, but I also don’t want to miss a video from the weekly guy over here either.” So YouTube’s trying to make a happy medium between both options there. And so you can pick which one works best for you and go from there.

One of the things that YouTube has been talking about a lot lately is investigative journalism; citizen journalism that’s taking place on YouTube. People just out and about, see something happen; they record it on their phone; upload it to YouTube and it goes viral. And it feels like it’s a much more trustworthy source of news and information than some of the stuff that we get on broadcast television. Now, YouTube wants to kind of harness all that and rather than going to tons of different places all over their website, they’ve made a new channel that’s specifically designed just for investigative reporting and it’s called the iFiles. Many different media outlets and news networks will be collaborating together on this one channel, instead of just kind of separating everything out all over the web. So if news and journalism is something that you need to keep up with on YouTube, go check it out; link is below.

One of the stories that came up this past week that has a lot of people scratching their heads is it’s being confirmed that the YouTube app will not be included with the new IOS version. All iPhones and iPads, will not natively come installed with YouTube app installed on them, like they always have been since the very, very beginning. No one is sure exactly what’s going on. It could be that Apple and Google are just kind of at odds and don’t want to cooperate over something like this. Traditionally Apple has developed that YouTube app for their devices and it might be that it’s coming to a point where Google says, “You know what? We need really to start getting ads on mobile devices and we want to start controlling annotations. We want to make our own app.” And so maybe Apple is being gracious and saying, “Hey, we’ll bow out. Make your own app; put it on the App Store and let other people download YouTube app for free.” Maybe it’s transitioning hands that way. Maybe it’s all about advertising revenue; no one’s really sure. Personally though, I wonder how this might affect online mobile views for people who wouldn’t actually go out and take the initiative to download the YouTube app, but if they buy the device and they see “Oh, it’s there, I might as well watch something,” and maybe they get involved that way. I wonder if it’s really gonna like cut down on like the casual mobile views that are happening just because it’s there? And if it’s not there for them, will they still go out and get it and be proactive about it? I don’t know. We’ll see. If you have any speculation about why you think Apple is saying “Hey, no more YouTube app; we’re not making it for our IOS devices anymore,” comment below and let me know. I’d really love to hear what kind of ideas and things you guys have heard about why Apple might be shutting that down. Or maybe it’s imposed by Google and they’re saying, “We don’t want you to make it anymore.” Who knows? Comment below and let us know.

There’s a great article — a link-up to it below, from Adweek, and it’s about How to Win at YouTube. And it covers some of the emerging tactics that are really coming out of all the YouTube programming about what’s working and what’s not. And I think a lot of us who are really engaged and entrenched deeply in the YouTube, there’s a lot of things that we already know in this article, but it really gave confirmation that we’re on the right track with a lot of this stuff as far as you know, content is great, but engaging with your users and your viewers is even more important. And there’s a lot of different case studies and scenarios that they cover in this article, including some big TV companies that are publishing really high quality professional content to YouTube, and how that’s working. Some of the lesser quality professional content, about how it’s totally blowing the other stuff out of the water, just because of the audience interaction and participation and all of the social networking that’s going on; the people who are viewing YouTube as a social network, rather than just a content delivery platform. That really makes a huge difference. So a lot of great takeaways in this article. If you’re doing anything on YouTube, whether you’re a brand, a marketer, a creator or just someone trying to build your audience, this is an article you’ll definitely want to take about 5 or 6 minutes to read. Check it out; link is below.

As far as some legal news there’s concern about online video. Let’s say for example, that someone took a copyrighted clip that they did not have legal rights or permission to upload to YouTube, but they did it anyway and then you take that video and you embed it on your website. Are you legally liable; could you go to jail for sharing a copyrighted video by embedding it on your website? And the answer now is officially: No, you cannot go to jail. You don’t get fined or anything like that. It really depends on whoever is hosting the video. They are the ones responsible and in this case, in the scenario I just gave, that would be YouTube. And while it seems to be common sense to us when we hear it, apparently it wasn’t. There was a lot of controversy over if you’re sharing that video with people and it’s not yours and it’s copyrighted, do you then have any part of liability in that lawsuit, if that company gets sued or not. And it turns out no, you’re totally free. So I don’t want to tell you to go out there and share all the copyrighted content you want now, but if you ever do share a video or embed a video that doesn’t legally belong to you, you’ll be fine. No worries there; it’s all on the person hosting it. It’s their bad.

If you own an Apple TV, you may be very excited to hear that now Amazon has some video, Google+ and Skymount TV are all now totally available on Apple TV. A lot of us are wondering, what took it so long for these subscription streaming services to get to an Apple TV? It just makes sense that they would be there, but they haven’t and there are a lot of different speculations. And there’s a great article from Gizmodo; link up to it below if this is something you’re interested in. Definitely go check it out. It goes into much more detail about why maybe this took so long and why Apple is opening up now all within like 2 or 3 days. All of a sudden from saying “No. No. No. No,” to “Alright, come on in guys.” And then boom all three of these guys hop on, and within a couple of days of each other. What is going on? And basically some people are saying, it probably is like Amazon’s like, “Although these guys do kind of compete for our sales in iTunes, probably not really that too much. So it probably is going to work out better for us in the long run because now we’re selling hardware and we don’t have to depend on just software.” And there is a lot of different speculation going on. If you have one that is of particular interest to you make sure you share it with us in the comments below, because I’m interested in all of them. But the link to the article on Gizmodo is below. Definitely go check that out. But the bottom line: more streaming services coming to your TV through Apple TV.

And another article you’ll want to check out is actually on our very own ReelSEO.com. We covered 20 of the top online video ads and what made them so successful? What led to these ads being spread around so virally? How did they accomplish what they were trying to set out for their brand or their campaign? All that and much more; it you want to see those top 20 videos there’s a linkup below.

And guys, I will see you on Thursday for our Creator’s Tip video, when I talk with Jim Louderback, the CEO of Revison3 and we’re going to talk a little bit about the difference between talking to a YouTube camera and talking to a television camera. What’s the difference? What’s going on there between the different personalities that are doing very well on YouTube and the ones that are doing well on television? That’s what I talk to Jim Louderback about, so if you want to subscribe to get that video, make sure you click that button above this video here on YouTube or you can click right there as well. We’d love to have you guys for these videos, Creator’s Tip videos, production videos and a lot more coming up that you guys don’t know about yet. But definitely stay tuned because it’s going to be exciting. So thanks for hanging out with us guys and will see you guys again next week for another look at the Reel Web. Bye.

What do you think? ▼

http://www.facebook.com/theguy.tmed TheGuy TMed

Great... Now I can't see the whole description in YouTube... It just shows ... where it gets cut off. And now I cant remove favorites... AND NOW THERE ARE FRICKIN ADS!!!!!! Google, you evil, evil company. Why do you have to torture everyone with this. It's like TF2. No direct upgrades. There are ALWAYS downsides. And you still can't unlike without disliking, undislike without liking, choose what you're flagging videos for, rate comments, flag them, and most importantly, YOU STILL CAN'T REPLY TO COMMENTS!!!!!! And many, many more F*CKING PROBLEMS WITH THE F*CKING NEW YOUTUBE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Joey Giangola

I use it on apple TV, even if it leaves much to be desired, it's still better than nothing.

Grant Crowell

When is Casey Abrams going to decide between ReelSEO and American Idol? Funny how he feels the need to put on his wig and sport a ginger-Afro on American Idol, yet here he shows a slim-trim look with a "Go Brewers" baseball cap. ;-)